Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (4 page)

Saturday, March 22, 2003

I
t was almost 11 P.M. when I got a call from Charlie. I’d driven back across the river into St. Louis after scraping the edges of Eric’s hometown. I knew I wouldn’t find out much more about Sullivan until I had the right questions to ask. But I had enough to get started.

I’d just unwrapped a Hearty Man meal and punched two minutes on the microwave when the phone rang.

“Brinkley,” I answered, knowing it was the station, but not sure who was on the other end.

“I have a lead on your flasher,” Charlie said.

First my mind went to a case I got during my brief stint as an MP twelve years ago—working cases while I healed a busted shoulder. A veteran used to go into the barracks naked and sing the pledge of allegiance. The mind is strange that way, in how it jumps back and forth through time without reason. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about one of my girls, my current case, Rachel.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Her mother says she came home a week ago to get her birth certificate and a few of her other important papers, like her passport. The girl told her mother that she needed them for a job. So I checked the system for any places who’d requested background checks on her. An insurance company in Jeff City had a hit. She also applied to a printing factory in the same area. Both turned her down, of course.”

“What’s wrong with hiring an attractive young woman who just happens to detest clothing?” I was trying to make a joke. Not to demean the girl, but because it was Easter night and here my friend was doing the grunt work for a case far below his pay grade.

I didn’t need any more proof he was miserable.

He snorted. “I think it’s the stealing they’re worried about.”

“Ah well, to each their own, I suppose.”

“What is that sound?” he asked.

“My dinner. The little round table keeps catching, sorry.”

“She’s only hitting up jobs she isn’t qualified for. So I compiled a list of places in the area that are hiring. Figured you could check them out and try to catch her going in or out.”

“Brilliant work,” I said, sticking a fork into my meal and finding the center frozen. Swearing, I stuffed it back into the radiation box. “Not sure why you even hired me.”

There was a long pause before he spoke again.

“How about an O’Malley’s bacon burger and a beer?” he asked.

Even if he wasn’t one of my oldest friends and my superior, I knew I couldn’t turn him down.

“No such thing as too much beef or beer,” I said and stopped the microwave. “I’ll meet you there.”

Sunday, March 23, 2003

O
’Malley’s was surprisingly full. A large group of men dominated one end of the bar, a few singing loudly in heavily accented English. They were probably Irish. Clearly, the idea of getting drunk on Easter Sunday was a tradition for some. I wondered if it was a tradition they brought with them when the Irish came to build the railroads. Enough of the group had bright red hair to make me wonder.

Charlie sat at the bar, one hand open and waiting as the barman refilled his mug from the tap. When the beer was handed over, foam sloshed against the rim and Charlie bent his head to suck up the mess.

“Hey,” I said and slapped his back before I climbed onto the stool beside him.

“Hey.”

“So how long have we got? What’s your bedtime?”

Charlie harrumphed. “It’s hard to tell when I am supposed to be up or down these days.”

“I’ll buy your drinks then,” I said and waved to the barman. “If we get enough in you, you should sleep just fine.”

The barman responded to my wave and came back. He wore a white dress shirt under a black vest and white apron. Classy shit. He looked more like a maître d' than a guy in a pub pulling the tap.

I ordered a McSorely’s Black and a bacon cheddar burger. If the barman judged me for not drinking a Harp, which seemed to be the beer of choice for much of O’Malley’s clientele, at least he didn’t give me shit for it.

I slapped the bar top a couple of times, rhythmically, in tune to the music seeping from the jukebox across the way, barely heard over the ruckus from the group at the other end of the bar and the loud TV over their heads. I felt good for the first time that day.

But Charlie’s mood was dark—his face turned toward his beer as if he were looking for something in the bottom of that glass.

“What’s going on, man?” I asked.

Charlie lifted his beer and took a long drink. Then he licked the foam off his lips. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I went still beside him. I wouldn’t lie to him, but I also wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say.

After me giving me a once-over and not finding what he wanted, he looked down at the beer in his hands again. “I spoke to Lieutenant Brant today.”

Here it comes
, I thought.

“I know what he said,” he began. “But I want to hear you tell it.”

“What did he say?” I asked, looking up at the mirror behind the bar. My shoulders were slumped, my face dark. All the excitement I’d just relished over having the first beer of the evening was gone.

“That you shot a kid in a bomber vest and then totally lost your shit.”

“Those were his exact words?” I asked. “
Totally lost my shit
?”

Charlie sighed. “No. He said you kept the body. That you refused to let anyone take it away from you and that instead, you wrapped it up like a goddamn Christmas present and hauled it off into the desert. Then you resigned the next day.”

“His name was Aziz,” I said. “Not
it
, or the
body
, or even
him
. Aziz.”

Charlie looked horrified. “How do you know?”

“Because I took him home. I put him in his mother’s arms and I put a gun in his father’s hands and pressed the barrel to the side of my head and begged him to do the right thing.”

I killed your boy. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Blow my brains out, please. I beg you.

Charlie stopped drinking his beer. The burgers came, but neither of us moved to touch the hot food. The barkeep asked us something, probably about ketchup, but we didn’t answer so he went away.

“Why would you do that?” he asked, quietly, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him over the TV and the cheering.

“There was no bomb. I knew by looking at the vest there was no bomb, but the MP said he saw a light and I pulled the trigger. The light was a fucking keychain, some touristy piece of shit that flashed and blinked. Aziz was a decoy, and I killed him.”

“You can’t be blamed for that,” he said. “If it had been a bomb—”

“There was no bomb.” I screamed and slammed my fist against the bar top.

Charlie picked at a fry in his basket and put it back down, rubbing salt behind between his fingers. “You should’ve told me. You shouldn’t be working.”

“I have to work,” I said. “I
have
to. Sitting at home by myself with nothing better to do than to think is the worst thing that could happen to me right now. I’ll blow my fucking brains out.”

Charlie considered this. He poked at his fries, contemplated his beer and then finally spoke again. “You need help.”

“I need to work. I need to find the girls, and I’ll find Sullivan too. But I need to work through this.” My desperation was real and powerful. My hands were shaking. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest.

I was asking my oldest friend not to kill me.

“I should take the Michaelson case and give—”

“No,” I stopped him. “I’ll find her. I need to find her.”

“Finding her isn’t going to bring hi—
Aziz
—back.”

“It’s a start,” I said.

After a long time, Charlie nodded. “OK. I’ll sign off on this, but if anything gets to you, if you start to feel unsteady or—”

“I’ll tell you,” I told him. “I swear to God, I’ll tell you.”

41 Weeks

I
n dreams, sometimes he dies in my arms. The impossibility of it doesn’t matter. The twenty minute hike from the mountain to the base becomes a step or two, and then I’m lifting him from the ground into my arms. The shot that killed him instantly, going clear through one side of his head and out the other, becomes a misfire, clipping his heart or shoulder or gut, and so he is still bleeding when I pull him into my lap and hold him. His white teeth and the whites of his eyes are exaggerated against his dark skin. The teeth chatter as I cry over him. The eyes roll up into his head as I scream at the sky.

In real life, I stayed with his body. I left my post and demanded they find the boy’s family. When they told me where to go, I wrapped the boy in a green military blanket and took him home. Even the nights I don’t see his face, or watch him die, I can still hear his mother wailing and his father beating his chest, while the goats scream through the night.

Monday, March 24, 2003

W
ith Easter weekend behind me and almost no news on my desk come Monday morning, I turned my attention to the missing kid, Maisie Michaelson. It had been almost a week since Maisie went missing, so we were outside the 48-hour window where most kids showed up—if they were going to. We had bulletins and missing child alerts everywhere, but that hadn’t generated shit, nothing credible anyway. Too often people lied when a reward was involved, desperate for the money, with no regard for the missing child’s safety.

I drove out to the house where Maisie lived with her parents.

It was a small house, a Cape Cod with its sloped roof and pointed ridges, at the end of a quiet street. There were two large windows in front, framed by black shutters against the burnt orange brick exterior. To the right of the house, a cul-de-sac was claimed by a few large trees crowded with underbrush and long grasses, but this was separated by a large privacy fence enclosing all sides.

A dog began barking once I closed the door to the Impala. I’d seen the Saint Bernard once before, through the slits in the fence as it paced back and forth, trying to get a better look at me.

Mrs. Michaelson opened the front door before I even made it up the walk. Her eyes were wide, glassy. Her hands trembled and I could tell that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to let me in or tell me to go away. I wish I knew why I had that effect on some women.

“No news yet,” I said immediately, shoving my hands in my black bomber jacket. I didn’t want her to think I’d come to tell her that her daughter was dead. “I have a few more questions.”

Something changed in the woman. Her expectant gaze, part-hope part-terror, hardened. Her back straightened as she opened the door for me.

I stepped into the warm living room and saw that not much had changed. The place was still spotless but that wasn’t uncommon. It could go either way—their home could fall into disrepair as they longed for their kid’s return, or they could clean constantly, hoping to keep it nice for her. It told me that Mrs. Michaelson was hopeful, hanging on to the dream of Maisie’s return more than anything else.

“Have you heard anything, Mrs. Michaelson?” I asked.

“No.” She sat on the stiff sofa. “You told us to call if we heard demands, but there’s been nothing. Not a word.” She rested her hands in her lap, trying out a couple of different places, but seemed unhappy with each option.

“I just wanted to ask,” I said and sat in the chair opposite her instead of on the couch at her side. I kept a respectful distance. “I know that sometimes it is hard to remember minor details like that.”

“Hearing from my daughter would not be a minor detail, Mr. Brinkley,” she said.

“Of course not.” The large window behind her let in a lot of white, cold light, blurring out her face. But I could tell by her tone she was defensive, angry.

“Ask your questions.”

“Sure,” I said. “I apologize if they appear repetitive. I just want to make sure I have everything right.”

She said nothing.

“You dropped Maisie off at school at 8:30.”

“Yes. Then I got the call at 11:30 saying she was missing.”

“And where were you in between?”

“I’m not a bad mother,” she screamed, her voice exploding in the small room around us. “Plenty of mothers leave their kids places for a couple of hours—the pool, the library, the backyard. What was I supposed to do? Not send my child to school? Maisie loved—”

Mrs. Michaelson froze. When she spoke again her voice was much quieter and controlled. “Maisie
loves
school. She started early just because of how smart and mature she is. This is because of the accident, isn’t it? I wish one of you would just have the nerve to admit it.”

The accident, yes—Last year Maisie wandered into the street and was hit by a car. She died, but woke up and was returned to the Michaelson’s. For all I could tell, that had been an accident, and the Michaelson’s seemed thrilled they’d gotten their daughter back.

“I don’t believe you are a bad mother,” I said calmly. Mrs. Michaelson cried at this, as if my words were simply too hard for her to hear. “Accidents happen.”

She nodded. “We wanted Maisie so badly. Why would we let her get hurt?”

“I know,” I said. The Michaelsons had adopted Maisie after failing to conceive. I didn’t think they’d go through all that trouble just to change their minds about having her. Everyone I’d talked to—teachers, neighbors, friends—said Maisie was a sweet and bright kid. As lovable as they came. It was clear Maisie adored her parents and clear they adored her.

“It’s like when we first got her,” she said quietly, looking up and beyond me, at something I couldn’t see. “There is always a danger that the mother will change her mind, you know? That someone will appear and take the baby back. So there are these days where you are just waiting and waiting to find out if you’re going to lose her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again because I wasn’t sure what else to say. When the silence stretched on and I realized that Mrs. Michaelson was in no shape to talk, I decided to try something else. “Mrs. Michaelson, can I take another look through Maisie’s room?”

“You’ve been up there a hundred times,” she said.

“Actually, I’ve only peeked in once, briefly. It was mostly the tech crew that inspected the room.”

“What are you looking for?” she said, stiffening on the couch. “Her body?”

“Is it up there?” I asked and regretted it as soon as I spoke. The woman’s shoulders began shaking violently with her tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s been a long weekend.”

The woman said nothing, just cried into her palms. I watched her for a moment longer trying to consider what to do. Finally I said, “Do you mind if I just go up?”

Still shielding her face with one of her hands, she waved me on with the other.

I climbed the stairs one at a time, noting the family pictures on the wall. Mr. and Mrs. Michaelson with their dark hair and eyes. Maisie with her bright blond locks and big blue eyes. A few had just Maisie and that beast of a Saint Bernard.

Maisie’s bedroom was on the left at the top of the stairs. It was pulled closed, probably because the Michaelsons simply didn’t want to walk by it and be reminded again and again that their daughter was not home. I was damn sure a closed door still did the same.

I wrapped a fist around the handle and it was warm. I wondered how often one or either of them came up and wrapped a hand around it but couldn’t bring themselves to open it. How hard must parents cling to this place between the possibility that they could open the door and find her there on the other side, or open the door and know she is truly gone.

I pushed the door open and was confronted by a barrage of pink. The walls were pink and white-striped satin and the comforter was bubblegum fluff. The room was tidy and I could see lines in the carpet from a recent vacuuming. I stepped into the room.

The sloped ceiling forced me to stoop or risk bashing my head. I picked up a few age-appropriate toys. Pulled back the bed sheets and replaced them, opened the closet and closed it. But I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing spoke to me.

I went downstairs, prepared to give Mrs. Michaelson a polite goodbye before heading over to the school, but I didn’t find her in the living room. I called her name, but heard no answer. I resisted the urge to pull my gun, given the fact that I was in someone’s home. A child’s home.

Then I saw her outside on the opposite side of the glass door. She stood in her backyard, fussing over one of those ornamental trees. With a pair of clippers, she hacked at it ruthlessly, the little green twigs falling away to the deck beneath her. The Saint Bernard tried to lick her face once or twice before she succeeded in shooing it away.

Before I could reach her, something caught my eye. On the fridge was a kid’s drawing. For six years old, it was no masterpiece, but Maisie had some skill. Enough that I could tell it was her and a man, holding hands. I would have assumed it was her father, Mr. Michaelson, if not for one exception. This man had light hair, scribbled in by a yellow crayon. But Mr. Michaelson, like his wife, had black hair.

I removed the picture from the fridge and opened the back door. Mrs. Michaelson paused, her blades held open in one hand, the bonsai hanging in the other. The Saint Bernard, whose name I suddenly remembered as Max, galloped by chasing a squirrel.

I held up the picture. “Did Maisie draw this?”

“Yes, why?”

“When?” I asked. I squatted down beside her so she didn’t have to crane her neck up to look at me.

“I don't know. It had to be in the last month. I probably wrote the date on the back.”

I turned it over and saw there was in fact a date, just a few days before Maisie’s disappearance. “Did she tell you who the man was?”

“The tooth fairy,
why
?” The blades in her hand began to look more threatening.

“Did the tooth fairy visit her often?”

She was about to refuse my suggestion. I could see it in her face. Then her irritation softened with a question. “She told us that he visited her all the time, even before she began to lose her teeth.”

“Was there anything strange about these visits?”

“They weren’t real,” she insisted. “They were just a dream.”

“Humor me,” I said. “Tell me about this tooth fairy.”

“Maisie has only lost three baby teeth. We told her to put them under her pillow each time, and then John or I would sneak in to put money under her pillow, except we could never find the teeth and there would already be money under the pillow. The first time I thought my husband did it. The second time he thought I did it and the third time we asked each other and realized neither of us had taken the teeth or given her the money.”

“Could a real man be coming into your house and stealing your child’s teeth?” I asked.

She scoffed. “That’s absurd. The house was locked tight. The alarm was set. I even checked her window every morning and night to make sure it was locked. There’s no way to climb up to it either. A man simply could not have gotten into this house.”

I knew from experience this wasn’t true. “Did Maisie tell you what the tooth fairy wanted or why he was visiting her?”

She looked at the mangled plant in her hands. “Once she told me that he had come and used a
cutie tip
on her.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“It’s just the way she used to say Q-tip. Cutie tip. She was three at the time.”

“Right.”

“Oh god, no. No,” she repeated. “It was just a dream. No one in their right mind would believe the tooth fairy is real.”

No
, I thought, but a man sneaking into a house and lying to a child so she wouldn’t be scared of him, that was a very real possibility.

“What about the money and the teeth?” I asked. “I think John is just trying to trick me. He’s a bit of a joker.”

“If I ask your husband, do you think he’ll tell me the truth?”

“Of course,” she said as the Saint Bernard galloped by again.